The Debt
by missgunst
Summary: Clintasha One Shots; pre-Avengers Stories about how their partnership began and how their relationship started to grow, about what happened before the battle of New York 2012, warning, will maybe include Budapest at some No chronical (Currently paused and under )
1. Aftermath

There they were. Bruised and battered in the back of one of those high-tech jets S.H.I.E.L.D. did own. Only the sound of the gears and the shaking of the aircraft reminded her of where she was.

It was night. Through the windscreen one could have seen the stars. He had always loved the height, the speed. Flying was his thing. But she guessed that he was sound asleep on the other side of the cargo area. Asleep, like she wished she could be.

It wasn't that she disliked flying. But her mind was restless. Whenever she closed her eyes there was the muffled sound of screams and the hollow click of gunshots. _Only memories. Nothing more, nothing less_, she kept telling herself, but it wouldn't make them go away.

Her elbows were placed on her knees. Her left leg hurt where she was shot. Beneath the fabric of her suit there was bandage putting pressure on her wound. Clint had insisted on treating the graze shot.

Normally she was not the one ending up shot. But this mission had been anything but normal.

Her forehead rested on her interlaced fingers, her back hurting due to her bent position. But she couldn't care less. Her aching body at least kept her conscious.

The crimson hair concealed her face from the others on the jet and severely narrowed her sight, so that try as she might she could only see the ground of the aircraft. If she would have been able to keep her eyes open.

Oh Lord, she was so dead tired.

Again and again she was drifting off. And every time when she did, the memories came back, pictures of little bodies flashing through her mind. Little bodies covered in blood. Skinny. Abused. Tortured.

They had known that it was about human trafficking. They had known. But nobody told them that it was about children.

Barton and she had been overrun by a little private military force that had been watching the prison. That was the irony part, the fact that the children were kept hostage in an old abandoned prison, waiting until some horny old bag would choose one of the young girls or the youthful boys with their still girlish features and paid their price.

It had not been the first time that the spies broke into a prison. It had not been the first time that they had seen wrecked and ruined bodies, demolished and tortured corpses of those whom did not survive the shipment or the _treatment_. But it had been their first time seeing those bruised and battered bodies of children.

Even the living had been covered in dirt, sitting in their own excrements. Their arms and legs had been covered with dark bruises, the kind that would only appear when someone tried to defend themselves or was taken violently against their will. Those kinds of bruises that would vanish from their little bodies without leaving a mark.

Natasha felt sick.

After everything the spy survived in her long life, she felt so exhausted, that this flight back to headquarters felt like the most impossible thing to do. She could barely keep herself together. She felt numb. And guilty.

The readhead heard someone get up. It was Barton. The rhythm of his footsteps giving him away.

He walked past her, his boots appearing for a brief second in her field of view. She could tell that he was headed to the front section of the jet. She heard him talking to the pilot, but she didn't pay any attention what they were talking about with their lowered voices.

The conversation was short.

When the sound of his heavy boots once again interrupted her circling thoughts, she was surprised when they stopped next to her. Releasing a breathless sigh, Barton sat down on her right, leaning back.  
Instantly she could feel the heat of his body next to hers, even though they did not touch. That was one of those things: Clint's skin was always warm. Not to say _hot_. He was radiating heat. Natasha guessed it was a male thing.

The silence between them thickened the air and relaxed Natasha's sour muscles. His presence calmed her, soothing her nerves.

Natasha knew why he came over. He had seen. Like always. Natasha could not hide anything from her hawk.

The redhead straightened her back and stretched her injured leg. When she turned her head a little to look at him their eyes locked.

Barton seemed eased. Eased but exhausted. She knew that Clint was not really relaxed, but he tried to give her the impression that he was. And he knew that she knew.

There were dark circles under his eyes and there was a cut on his right temple. The skin on his naked arms was scratched and bruised. Natasha knew that there were many more injuries on his body, but at least none of them was visible.

The ironic part was that it wasn't he who had been shot this time, but her. Somehow this simple fact amused Natasha. But it was a shallow feeling, which vanished before it could bring light to her vacant expression.

For a moment they did do nothing but looking at each other.

Barton had seen. He had seen the terror in her emerald eyes when they had discovered that the mission had been about children. Like he was able to see now, that Natasha needed comfort. Closeness. Something this strong woman next to him would never admit. Something he would gladly give her.

That was their little game. The more she tried to be for herself, dealing with everything they have been through alone, the more he would stick around, give her company. But normally they would be alone. The closeness they shared in their relationship was a thing known by everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D., but a thing no one ever had seen happening with their own eyes.

Natasha was the first to drop her gaze and leaned back as well. On the jet were only two other agents, one of them as a co-pilot, and the pilot itself. The other agent had been busy checking something on his small computer since Clint sat down next to the darkly-dressed spider. But again, Natasha could not care less.

Instead, she just closed her eyes and gave in, leaning her head on his shoulder, inhaling his scent. He smelled of blood and the dirt and the familiar fragrance that was him Barton's presence would keep the nightmares away. As always.


	2. Stay

"Stay with me." Those were the words Clint whispered while he held Natashas fragile body. It happened months ago, when she ... passed out. She did not really pass out, not literally, but he had no other word to describe it. And while he was lying there on the floor right now, surrounded by a dull silence with their eyes locked, he remembered. And given the way she looked at him, the small glimmer of knowledge, of hurt which was barely visible due to the panic in her emerald eyes, he knew she remembered to.

_Stay with me._

There was pressure. Pressure from her deadly hands, from which he knew, could also be tender and soft. He felt them on his chest. God, she was so beautiful. But as much as he wanted to lift his arm, to raise a hand to touch her still fair hair, he had no strength within him.

His vision faded. First slowly, then suddenly he was surrounded by darkness.

_Stay with me._

When those words were spoken he had held her tight, he had pulled her under the shower while she still had been in shock. It was short after he brought her in, after he brought her to S.H.I.E.L.D., after he spared her life. Because she had fascinated him, from the very beginning. Natasha Romanoff had amazed him from the moment he first had laid eyes on this beautiful and yet so deadly creature.

Back then she had been in shock. The Department had messed with her head so often and royally, that after she suffered from a head injury he gave her, all the memories came back in a rush. Memories from … he did not even know how old his spider was. Sixty years? Maybe seventy? Older? But it had never mattered to him. Also not back then, when the cold water had covered their bodies and drenched his black uniform and her light turquoise hospital dress. When Clint concentrated he still could feel her slender body which he had pressed against his, could still feel her heartbeat against his chest. He remembered everything. How soft her hair was, how empty her eyes were. How relieved he felt when he got her back.

There was movement in the darkness. But it was not the darkness that moved, it was him, even though he did not intend to do so, even though he did not even use a muscle. It was a sudden realisation that the pressure on his chest was missing. But the shock, which was supposed to come with this insight, stayed out.

Light dazzled him as he cracked his eyelids open. It felt like liquid fire on his retinas. The time it took him to open his eyes again, to identify the blurred colours next to him as his female Russian partner, felt like a weird slow motion show. Just that everything around him seemed to rush, just his brain seemed to be too groggy, his thoughts wrapped in a dull fog.

The warm and wet thing on his cheek flooded his body with a wild sensation of longing and relief, calmed and soothed him.

The warmth was her hand. The wet, sticky thing was his blood.

"Did you hear me", she said, still putting pressure on his chest wound. It was hard to catch her look, to lock his gaze with hers since his vision kept blurring whenever he managed to perceive the outline of her face. His lips cracked open, but his voice got stuck somewhere in his throat. There was sorrow in her face. Nobody else would have recognized the slight change in her expression, which seemed to be concentrated and agent-like. Professional. No one would be able to tell. No one, but him. "Stay with me." Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. And in his world of absolute silence it was nothing more but her lips moving. But he heard her voice inside his head, rebuilt her words within in his memory.

He felt tired. Tired and broken. And all he wanted to do was to close his eyes and sleep. It would be nice to sleep. The darkness, that was straining on the edge of his consciousness, was tempting and promising. Only a nap. A few minutes maybe. To gather strength. To be able to focus on her. The part with the knowledge that came along with the longing to rest, that he maybe would never wake up again, seemed not to be so bad.

Neither did he feel her shaking his body as he closed his eyes, nor did he hear her wonderful husky voice yell his name.


	3. Plea

It had been six days. Six days in which she had barely slept. If she had dozed off, she had snapped awake as soon as her head had lowered an inch just to let the digital clock on the wall, right next to the door, tell her that it only had been seconds in which her mind had been absent.

Sitting in a room with plain white painted walls, a straw yellow coloured linoleum floor and way to bright ceiling lights were draining on her nerves. It was exhausting. And terrifying. Natasha did not remember anything that had terrified her more and relived her more at the same time.

It was the steady rhythm with which the high peeping tone commented every beat the strong heart in Clinton Bartons chest made. Every peep meant that it was still beating, that blood was circulating through his veins, that he was alive. And still she was frightened that every tone could be the last one, that the peeping noise would suddenly stop and his chest would not lift the sheer blanket ever so slightly with every breath he took.

He was pale. Not as pale as the white cover of the pillow on which his head rested, it was more a greyish-pale. This kind of pale which did not make you look ill, but made you look like you already had one foot in the grave. Clint looked more dead than alive, which was why the peeping of the electrocardiogram was so essential to her. The nurse had offered days ago to turn the sound of, but Natasha had thrown her out. She had threatened her verbally in so many ways, that it was a miracle that the nurse had not spun on her heels to get the hell away from the Russian spy, but had commented coolly, that she would be there if Natasha would need anything. Remembering this situation was the only distraction she had, apart from the unconscious Hawkeye in the hospital bed, wrapped in bandages and more dead than alive. Only the calm expression on the blond nurse' face could distract her by sleep deprivation clouded thoughts; otherwise Natasha would remember how Clint had stumbled, with an expression of disbelief on his face and the absolute absence of pain in his features. And then he had fallen.

God, she was so sick of seeing him stumbling and falling, sick of seeing him bleeding. But she kept seeing it, over and over again. The scene was imprinted to her brain. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw again how the small runlet of blood had left the corner of his mouth. His lips had been moving and his breath had sounded rattled. She had no diploma in medicine but she had been taught to torture – how to make it good and last long. She knew about anatomy. She knew about injures. She knew a dead man when she saw one. It was not about seeing the life leave his eyes, but knowing when something like death cannot be prevented.

She pressed her index finger and her thumb against the small bridge of her nose to prevent the headache, but neither did her thoughts stop circling nor did her tense neck muscles relax.

True, there would be an alarm in the nurse office as soon as the machine would record only silence and the doctors would rush into the room to react and bring her archer back. But machines could fail, which was why she was sitting here, listening to the unnerving peeping sound and watching him breathe. Watching him sleep. Watching him live. And it drove her insane.

Since they brought him in here, since he came back from surgery, he hadn't even twitched once. Again she shifted in the chair. The digital clock on the wall said, that she had stopped wandering around in the empty and way too bright room only two hours ago. She was restless. And terrified. The mixture was unknown to the always so calm and collected assassin. The acoustic signal of the electrocardiogram was the only thing that pervaded the thick and heavy silence in this room.

Starring at Clints battered and deedless body drove her insane. By now, on day six, with her tormented mind and the insomnia she saw herself on the edge of madness. There was a hole in his chest. It was rather small and, in fact, so tiny, that only her pinkie or a pen would have had fitted in it. And yet this so little thing almost took her hawk. Almost. [i]Almost[/i] was a lie. There was still a chance that his lung would fail, that this friggin bullet would end his life, even though it had left his body almost a week ago. And there was nothing she could do. No one she could seduce, nobody she could kill, no one to torture. A bullet would not be affected by her, no matter how good her persuading skills were.

Natasha ran a hand through her crimson hair and leaned forward, propped her elbows on her thighs, never taking her eyes of him. And she started again, with what she did when she was not playing the scene how the bullet had hit his body, or not blaming herself for not making him wear his vest after their argument, when she was not wondering if she had lost her touch after she panicked as Clint was shot so that this damn nurse would stop by ever damn hour to check on her patient – and her. She started praying. It was neither a god nor any commonly known almighty power to which she was praying. She pleaded. To Clint. Pleaded quietly, screamed silently at him to wake up. To survive. Not for him, but for her.


	4. Leave

There they sat, in their regular pub. The two of them and their team. In a small bar in Manhattan, far away from all the glory and expensive clubs, in a pub called O'Malley's, where you could get drunk on cheap whisky, play pool and drown your sorrow in a few pitchers. Like they did today, as usual after a debriefing, that marked the end of a long mission with a way too heavy task for mortals. Suicidal missions: that was where the [block]Strike Team Delta[/block] came in.

Natasha never had something like a regular pub. Natasha never even had something regular at all. And Clint never had something like a family. Not after the circus. Not after he had been betrayed and left back behind. Alone. Left for dead in a lone alley.

Things had changed. Now Natasha had a regular thing. A habit. And Clint had won a family when he had joined S.H.I.E.L.D..

This so called family sat on their regular round table in one of the small booths. As always they already lost track of how many pitchers they have had so far, were bawling and roaring with laughter as one of them started with the same filthy joke they always did start when they got themselves really shitfaced. Given the fact that Tom fell about laughing from his chair it had probably been Leo.

Yeah. Things were exactly how they had to be. Except for one thing.

Himself.

Now he sat at the bar, kept staring into his amber-colored whisky, which was not really his taste, but the best shit they got at that friggin pub. Barton was not picky. Only when it came down to women, whisky and weapens – his three big [i]W[/i], at least Tasha kept teasing him with that – and other things - since he had let his guard down around the dangerous spider once. She had managed to get him drunk. On vodka. Which was his new number one reason to dislike vodka. Like tequila it had always made him way to talkative.

Loud guffaw reached his sensitive ears, coming from their table, as a song from [i]Kings of Leons[/i] started, when someone joined him at the counter.

He did not need to look up.

Clint knew who his new companion was. The person next to him raised his hackles and sent a chill down his spine. He reacted to her. Literally. He always had done, right from the start. It was like he could feel her eyes on him. Her look was a heavy weight on his body. And her presence made something in him tingle. He knew very well what that was. His heart. His soul. Everything he was. Damn emotions.

"Rough day?" Instantly he felt the urgent need to drown in her husky voice, to turn towards her, meet her emerald gaze and ask her to end his torment. Instead he stayed put und raised his tumbler slowly.

"Rough week", he answered in a low voice, mumbled the words into his glass and took a sip. The whisky crawled his down gullet like acid.

Still things were different. Ever since Budapest. Everything had changed in Budapest. And afterwards. Afterwards things had changed again. And not for the better. The one he had thought dead was alive, but where was the point in it, when he had lost everything he ever longed for? When he had lost her?

He saw from the corner of his eye that she raised a hand and pointed at his glass as she got the attention of the bartender. It was their regular bar. The bartender knew what she wanted. Whisky. Double. In fact she never really came to like whisky, this was one of the many things he knew about her … one of those things that were still true about her.

"Rough day?", he repeated her words, due to the kind of drink she had chosen.

There was a moment of silence between them, which was not really quiet, since the music and the heavy summer heat thickened the air; apart from the acoustic disturbance the silence between them was tense.

It was her. How she stood there, how she had looked on her tumbler, before she had raised her gaze, maltreating a point between the bottles which were lined up at the back of the bar with her intense glare. No matter how many things had changed, he still could read her.

"Though outcome." He still loved her voice, the way she spoke, the small pauses before she spoke. No matter who she was sleeping with, as soon as he felt her presence, heard her sensuous voice or their eyes locked and he instantly was captured by those emerald oceans, he fell for her again. Yeah … some things would truly never change. Not even Budapest would manage that. At least not on his side.

Finally he looked at her, did turn his head just far enough to see her profile, after he buried every yearning for her deep inside himself, after he managed to extract every emotion that could have given his feelings for his partner away from his eyes.

As she moved her head and her short red curls teetered with the slight movement, he tore away and looked at a dirty glass on the counter behind the bar. She raised her own glass to her lips and took a sip of an American blend whisky which tasted like oil and left a burning sensation in ones throat as like one had tried to drink fire.

Clint wanted to ask her, wanted to know desperately what was going on, but it was none of his business. Not anymore. This was a decision he had made for himself, to protect him, his feelings. His heart. She, the deadly and yet so beautiful assassin had still not figured out why he had abandoned their closeness. And due to the fact of how much she had forgotten when she came back from her personal purgatory, she would never find out the true reason. But it was good the way it was, he kept telling himself. Natasha had gotten her old strength back.

After she had come back, bruised and battered, tortured, more dead than alive, it had taken him months in which he had been sitting next to her bed, had been holding her, drying her tears, silencing her agonizing screams. It had taken a long time for her to start healing.

And bringing up any purgatory-related issues would probably send her right back into hell. And as self-destructive it was to remain silent, he was no monster. He may have cut the strings between him and his spider, avoided being alone with her, being her partner but not her friend, but he would never insist to discuss Budapest. Never. Even though every fiber of his body was aching to tell her, to beg her to remember what they had, he would never send her back. Never.

Clint was not stupid. He figured that they had tried to brainwash her. He was a spy too, so he knew about the procedure. First you take away their dignity. Even though they never talked about what happened to her, he knew. He knew, because he had seen her injuries, could still recall the picture of her tortured body, and could still make a perfect list of every scratch her body had had.

And when she finally had found a way out of her own hell, it was not him she came back to, it was someone else. Someone more equal. And Clint had to let her go.

It was the hardest decision he had ever made in his life, but he had to close his heart, to pull away, to get distance. At least as much as one could get when you work on the same friggin team with the person you try to get out of your system.

There was no hatred, nor regret. There was just … pain. An all-embracing utterly, outright, agonizing pain.

He had to abandon her from his heart, in order to protect himself.

And there they sat in tense silence, his heart aching and soul bleeding, until she finally spoke.

The fact that she still referred to him as [i]her hawk[/i] to him was a cruel joke. It only had been a random memory from their second last mission; Tasha still did mumble when she had a high fever due to an serious injury.

"I know something is off. Ever since I came back." Her voice was soft and tender. Like her skin. He knew exactly how her skin tasted. "Its me." Natasha paused. "I quit."

His under jaw moved forward, while he kept his gaze locked on the dirty glass behind the counter. Clint snorted. Of course she did. He gave her every reason to leave him. "The team? Really?" His own voice sounded hoarse.

"No, Clint." Tasha wrapped the slender fingers of her left hand around the tumbler and lifted it from the bar. As he heard his name his facial expression hardened and his heart grew heavy in his chest. But her next words left his mind blank.

"I resigned."

The Russian emptied the glass, did put the tumbler back on the counter and placed her right hand next to it.

Clint froze, his body did not want to move. He wanted to scream until his lungs would burn and yet no sound left his lips as he stared at her via the soiled mirror at the back of the bar, before his gaze dropped and he looked at the back of her hand. Next to the empty glass, there, where her right hand had been seconds before, there was a ring. A small golden ring. A wedding ring. Made for slender female fingers. He knew it. He saw it before. A long time ago. Years ago. On Natashas hands.

Shock paralysed him. All he could do was sit there and keep staring at the piece of jewellery that meant nothing to him and did now destroy everything he was. Clint could not take his eyes off of the ring she was wearing in their first year together, when they had to play a couple on a honeymoon in order to spy on a weapon trader. But it did not matter if he saw her leave the bar or not. He knew she was gone. And the moment she left his side, his team, his live, she took everything he was with her.


	5. Gone

How many times has she been here? She stopped counting years ago. Too many times.

After a rough solo mission she would always wait for him to come home, as she does now. She is sitting in the dark living room, barely able to see the outlines of the well-known furniture in the dim light of the streetlamps. Even if it was pitch-black she would be able to move around, knowing this place by heart. She could rebuild this apartment in her memory, anytime, if she would just close her eyes. It would not matter if she was sitting on this sofa in the middle of the night, if she was on a jet to Uzbekistan, or going to interrogate a sheik in Dubai. This is her island. This is her safe place.

In the rare cases where he was home already she would have just knocked at his door. He would have opened the door to his apartment, gazing at her in surprise. He never really got used to the idea that she would use something like a door, or do any normal human thing like visiting someone. There was no need any more for her to be invited in. Not since she once crawled into his bed.

A narrow smile raises the corners of her red lips. She remembers it well.

It was after one of their first missions apart. She had a hell of a trip. A hell of a mission. A hell of a target. She remembers how much of a mess she was after that trip to Sao Paolo. When she came back she felt used, dirtied. She had often been touched by men. When she wanted to… and when she did not want to. It is part of being a spy, using your body. And sometimes your opponent would be too strong and you would have to play along, have to play the victim. Your body gets used. Abused.

The serum made her strong though. It improved her physical and mental abilities. She was a weapon. Deadly and yet beautiful. But still, she was neither immortal nor invulnerable. Not her body and, over all, not her soul.

That one night, after the debriefing, she wandered through the city and found herself on the other side of the street, looking at the windows of his apartment. It was late. It was dark inside. Whenever he was home he had no such thing as a special rhythm or a cycle that would allow one to know which time he would usually go to bed. They are master assassins. There is no such thing as usual.

Back then she did not know he was there, that he was home. But she did know that, when he would be there, there was a good chance that he would not be alone.

She climbed the fire ladder that night without giving it a second thought, and broke into his apartment. It was not the first time she had done so. But it was the first time she really, really needed him by her side. She needed to know what was real. She needed him to remind her why she cared, what she cared about, that she was real, that he was real. That _they_ were real.

That was the first time where she had entered his apartment while he was home. She was able to tell because of the disarray of things. The magazines on the table, an empty coffee mug in the kitchen, a pile of clothes on the armrest of his couch, an empty glass and a half-empty bottle of whisky next to his remote control.

She remembered feeling like she was drowning that night, like you would feel in your dreams, in one of those where you are falling. You don't know why you are falling, or where you are falling from, but when you wake up there is this sensation. This moment where your heart skips a beat when you think, captured in those sweet seconds between sleep and waking, that you are falling. For real.

Back then she felt like the intruder she was, but knew at the same time that she needed his support. She had stripped down all of her clothes: The light brown leather jacket, the black boots, the tight black trousers, the pair of socks, the black top, the black bra. And then, wearing nothing more than her black cotton panties, she had grabbed his white shirt from the stapled clothes on the armrest and pulled it on. The fabric, soaked in his scent, felt like the sweetest embrace to her. He must have had been wearing it for the whole day.

She switched on the small lamp on the side table in his living room, needing the light to help her grasp where she was whenever she lost her connection to reality when she would stir awake in the middle of the night. Then, she snuck into his bedroom, opened the door so that the faint stream of light highlighted his naked chest, which was moving slowly, steady, with every sleeping breath he took. Then she had snuck into his private bedroom, without making a sound, until she had reached his bed. The sheets had rustled under her hands and her skin when she had climbed into his bed, right next to him. She had left enough space so that she would not touch him and that there would be enough space between them that he would not touch her, even if he moved around in his sleep.

Back then she had not gone through the trouble to cover her legs with the blanket. She had not felt cold, nor had she wanted to wake him by reaching for the only blanket, which covered his body from his feet up to the lower part of his torso.

She remembered how it took him a few minutes to notice her presence, in which she had done nothing more than lay next to him and look at his sleeping face, silhouetted by the glimmer of light that came from the living room. First his lips had parted, then he had blinked once. She remembered how he had brought his right hand to his face, to rub over his eyes until he finally had turned his head around. Their eyes had locked and she had seen, no, she had _felt_ how he had stopped breathing for a second.

Then the surprise had risen to his eyes, and suddenly he had been wide awake. He had placed his right hand, with which he had been rubbing his eyes, on his bare chest, but had not stopped looking at her. He had scanned her face, her crimson hair, which was spread over his white pillow. His eyebrows twitched together for a second as he had realized what shirt she was wearing. His. Then his eyes had gone lower and her naked legs had come in view. Her pale skin had been gleaming in the soft light which came from the open door.

She knew that he also recognized the different smell on her. She did not smell like she used to. She smelt wrong. She had known very well that there had still been the stench of her last mission on her skin, like an old eau de cologne that you would recognize and immediately remember that you disliked it. There was still the scent of a different man. Even if he had not said so, she knew it. It had been written all over his face. There had been concern when his eyes had jerked back up to her face, searching for a sign if she needed to be caressed, to be held. She never asked him to hold her. But from time to time she would lean her head on his shoulder or there would be a soft touch by his hand whenever he saw that she needed him to do so.

Normally she does not like it to be touched. But he seems to know whenever she needs support. He knows when to give her solace and when to back off. He knows whenever she feels any need. He always knows. And he always gives her what she needs, without hesitation, without asking.

The business they are in is a dirty business. It's full of blood, lies, dirt, and betrayal. One would need some comfort once in a while. Like she had back then. And again, as always, he had seen what she needed. And he had given it to her. Like he would always give it to her.

He had not said a word, had simply lifted his upper body by supporting his weight on his left elbow, and moved the blanket to cover her naked legs, her hips, and had lain back down. If they would had been lovers he would have opened his arms for her and she would have crawled towards him, would have snuggled up to his bare chest, inhaling his scent and feeling like a betrayer, like she had cheated on him. But they were no lovers. Not back then. Not now. They were partners. That was the only reason why she came here; them being partners was the only reason they could be each other's backup. Them being partners was the only reason she could keep it together. Why she would not shatter into a thousand pieces.

"You and I, we're in this together", she had said on their first mission, when he had gotten injured badly but could not let go of his pride. "I'll have your back and you'll have mine. Now list them."

Now, looking back years later, she comes to the conclusion that only the panic in her eyes had made him list his injuries. That was one of those things they had. They had each other's back. Always. Even now, where they were not on a mission as partners, they would be there for each other.

She is still sitting on the sofa in his apartment, stuck in her memories, captured in the past, where they were lying next to each other in silence until she fell asleep surrounded by his scent. She recalls the sensation of the warmth of his body next to hers, embraced by the overwhelming feeling of comfort and protection, and the knowledge that nothing bad would happen to her, that no demonic memory of her past could harm her shattered soul as long as he was at her side. She does not remember having any nightmare at that special night. She cherishes that memory, even though she would never tell him. Still lost in thought, she barely notices a key turning in the lock to his apartment.

The door swings open, crashes against the wall behind it. He is not alone. Her heart aches at the sight of a woman's body next to his, one of her legs wrapped around his hips, her skirt up way too high. She could see from where she is sitting that this woman, who has long brown hair, does not wear any panties.

One of her hands is hooked in his short hair, the other hand wrapped around his neck. His big hands, which are supposed to pour him and his partner a drink, rests on those woman's blank thighs, holding her while he presses her heated body against the doorframe. With his.

The woman's moans poison the sweet silence in which the master assassin waited for her partner to come home. Their bodies are moving in a very specific way so that only the fact that he still is wearing his jeans assures her that he is not already fucking that bitch right in the hallway. Right in front of her eyes. But well, that woman would not seem to mind if it would be any different.

It would take him exactly eight seconds to realize that they were not alone. First his body would freeze, then his hand would reach for the switch. As he sees who is sitting there on his couch, staring at him, he literally drops the woman. Only the doorframe and the limited space between her and her lover to be prevent her from falling to the floor. Her. But not his unbuckled trousers.

"Who is that?" The high-pitched tone hurts in the assassin's sensitive ears. Thank god any woman can sound sexy as long as she moans in lust.

The _who_ does not respond. Neither does Barton. They are just looking at each other.

Slowly the spy rises to her feet, breaking the eye contact to her partner only to grab her jacket from the chair.

"Tasha." As his deep breathless voice reaches her she stops, raises her head to look at him again. He seems shocked. Then she continues, pulls on her jacket and moves towards him. And that slutty piece of flesh he decided to spent the night with.

"Who is that?" But neither one of them pays attention to the mere skank her partner intended to screw.

Suddenly he hurries to bend over and to pull his trousers upwards. The redhead could smell the alcohol. Cheap whisky.

"I didn't know you were here", he starts again, after he had pulled his jeans back on, holding them where they belonged, seeing that the woman with the crimson hair was so close, that he would be able to touch her if he would just reach out one hand. But he would not. Now was one of those moments the female assassin would _not_ like to be touched.

Silence blooms out between them until it's thick and heavy, clouding the room.

"It's your apartment, Clint", she answers finally, her voice as smooth as it usually only is before she reveals the near death to her next target. "See you in a few."

Then she passes him and is gone like she came. Silently, without making a sound, without leaving a trace. Like she was never there.


End file.
